It was seen as a game changer in the American healthcare sector when it was unveiled many months ago. Yes, bringing JP Morgan Chase, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway together to invent a new system was a big deal. But healthcare is not an ecommerce operation which you can optimize easily. Of course, it is not banking, and certainly falls outside the domain of Warren Buffett’s investment sagacity.
So, the news is that Haven, a joint venture between the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, has informed employees that it will shutter by the end of the month, reminding everyone of the difficulty of changing the highly regulated healthcare sector in the United States..
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Haven began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
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Many of the Boston-based firm’s 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, the people said.
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One key issue facing Haven was that each of the three founding companies executed their own projects separately with their own employees, obviating the need for the joint venture to begin with, according to the people, who declined to be identified speaking about the matter.
Sure, the experiment will offer many insights to the companies as LinkedIn noted: “Three years ago, the trio sent shock waves through the medicine world with hopes its new company could innovate in the primary care, insurance and prescription drug space. Haven’s collapse reflects how hard it is to “radically improve” America’s “complicated and entrenched” health care system, per CNBC.”
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The lesson here is evident: the human system is different and sometimes the most valuable thing is not measured in financial terms. While we can improve banking, investment thesis and ecommerce, no one can optimize how doctors work because the systems they work on are evidently unique and different.
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